Damn you InktomiSearch! Damn you to hell!!!!!!!

So I'm checking my traffic logs as I usually do once every day or two, and I notice traffic has been a bit extra high the past few days. No mystery here. The bots must be at it again. I get these 3-5 day mini-traffic spikes usually about once every 10-12 days or so. However, I decided to look a bit closer, and I didn't like what I saw. Those are unique hits by day. I average around 6000 per day for both PokerForums and Movie Vault, but obviously something is amiss. I already know it's from bots, but again, I wanted to check further. Referral logs didn't show anything out of the ordinary. 90% from direct type-ins/bookmarks, 5% from search engines, and 5% from other sites. However, when I went to check the Domains and Users demographics for the past 6 days, on both sites, InktomiSearch accounted for 50% on each site! Fuck! The browser and robots section wasn't nearly as bad, with only a few percent being taken by bots for Movie Vault, and 10% by Gigabot for PokerForums. So I go to check the month of January. Browsers and robots were down to minimal numbers, but damn InktomiSearch was still 50% on both sites! So now fellow brethren, I have the following questions for you: 1. What does the InktomiSearch.com user agent crawl for? What search engines? 2. What does the GigaBot.com user agent crawl for? What search engines? 3. Is this normal? To have such a dramatically high percentage of users being annexed by a spider? 4. Check your logs, and let me know what % of your userbase and traffic are spiders. Do not check your referral area, check your domain/users area. So this is saddening. Because as far as I can tell, this means that my traffic is really only about 50% as I thought it was. And as my sites grow in content size, the balance will fall more in favour of the spiders, as more will be needed to recrawl the large portion of pages. Moving on... I've commissioned a presentational video, made in flash, to be used as a motivational and inspirational tool for other webmasters. It will be around 5-6 minutes long, and based on my meagre successes, encoporating custom commissioned music, video, photos, and text. However, to help underline the point that this isn't an isolated case, and to help score the point of the video to help inspire, near the end I'd like to have a quick flashing of names and income of other successful internet entrepreneurs as well. I was looking for the following information: Name (First name, Last name) Age URL of 1-3 sites (optional) Income (either monthly average profits or yealy profit range or daily range) Name, Age, and Income are mandatory. The video right now is around 60% done and is looking good. So if you could reply here with that information, that'd be great. Also, if you could spread the word to your other web entrepreneur friends, that'd help out too,. Thanks!

Oops, spoke to soon

Looks like Google is really taking its time on this update and isn't done. Apparantly all my forums have PR of 0. Which is fine with me, since they are non-existant anyhow. From what I've heard of others' new PR, too, I'm thinking Google is getting slightly better at awarding their notorious PR, which I'm all for, even if it means I have lower PR.

PR Update done!

The Google PR update is done. Checked the damage. Here are notable changes: PokerForums.org 5 to 5 No change, except all my 'front' pages had their PR striped.. because of a mod_rewrite thing I did to force all URL's to conform to /*/ for long-term benefits. Anyhow, I'm not upset, I have sooo many ads there that not being bumped down is a blessing in itself. TylerCruz.com 0 to 3 I'd have been happier with a 4, but I just got the domain not too long ago, and many people still have me linked to the blogspot URL.. I'll take what I can get. MmaForums.net 0-2 Not bad for a site that isn't up yet. MovieForums.org 0-3 Not bad for a site that isn't up yet. CookingForums.net 0-1 Not bad for a site that isn't up yet. Hypotheticals.org 0-2 This site is going to take over the world.

And they snatch it right back..

The mysterious PR6 has left me. Aw :( Oh well. That was strange though... perhaps a Google PR update in the works... I wouldn't be surprised, as it's been 123 days since the last one..

Hard day at work

For those of you who are just starting to get into the web entrepreneur game, or for those who don't know much about it, I thought I'd provide a little glimpse at just how truely difficult it is and how much time and hard work it requires. I will thus walk you through what I did yesterday, which is a typical day of the unfortunate labour I must endure. 10:30 or 11:00 a.m. or so: Woke up. Checked e-mails. Mostly the regular stuff. Signed up a few advertisers and checked my PayPal balance.

11:00-12:00 p.m.: Played XBox 360. 12:00 p.m-12:30 p.m: Ate some ice-cream cake and cookies and watched TV 12:30 pm- 1:30 p.m: Did a couple things from my 'list' and put up a couple paid ads. 1:30 pm - 6:30 p.m: Alternated between Xbox, surfing the web, chatting, watching TV, and eating, might have done a couple minor site stuff as well.

6:30-8:00 p.m: Girlfriend came over. Drove to the mall to buy a new video game and a poker set. $140ish. Played XBox360. Ordered pizza.

8:00-8:35 p.m: Pizza arrived. Bill with tip: $45.

8:35 - 10:00 p.m: Played the new Xbox360 game we bought.

10:00-11:00 p.m: Played poker. Her first time playing. She beat me heads up :(

2:45 a.m: Girl goes home.

2:45-4:15 a.m: Watched the rest of rented Lawrence in Arabia DVD.

4:15 a.m. Bedtime!

Now I hope you all learned a thing or two. This work.. this so-called 'web entreneur' thing.. it's not all what it's cracked up to be. It takes a lot of hard work and dedication. For those select few who are up to the challenge, I applaud you, but I just thought it would be important to note the down-and-dirty aspects of it.

Good luck!

Extremely Strange...

So I'm setting up Project J, and I set it up in Apache.. only to find out it has a PR of 6 already. I check web.archive.org - nothing there. I google it.. a couple results.. no hints of it being a past site... It's obviously not a 302 PR hijack or anything since It's running off my server fresh.. I see no signs of it being a past site.. and I double checked to make sure it wasn't just my toolbar acting up; it's indeed a PR6. LOL. Can anyone explain this? I can't give the URL out because it's Project J and is top secret..

Road to Recovery... Watch Out!

Hey everyone, I had undergone another dental surgery a couple Monday's ago, which went okay... I got really sick immediately after; not an infection or anything, but an extremely bad cold. I rarely get sick... it took me out of comission for a while, but I'm on the road to recovery now. In a few days I should be pretty much back to normal. So the past 11 days or so I've done very minimal work... but I hope to make up for it...: 1. XBox-O-Rama 2. Project J 3. The Forums 4. New List 1. XBox-O-Rama

Last night I went out and bought an XBox 360 Premium, an extra controller, and 2 games (Dead or Alive 4, Project Gothem Racing). It came to around 850-900 CDN with taxes. I really shouldn't have bought it as I've never been big on consoles; never owned one before and the few times I've played them they've always made me yawn; I've always preferred the PC to them. Plus, it's an added expense which isn't even a tax write-off, but I figured what the hell...

To be honest, I've already grown tired of the games.. hehe.. but I hope I'll find some more fun in them sometime in the future.. just need to pace myself with it I guess, and buy a couple more games in the future. It also looks nice in my entertainment centre though, so it's not a total loss. Finally, to justify the price, I put an ad in the paper today selling my old computer, which will help cover the costs for it. Hell, I just spent over 6 grand on dental surgery anyhow, so blah.

2. Project J

To those who are long-time readers of my little blog, you may remember Project J. Project J was a secret project that Mr. j0n and I had teamed up on. However, due to a very busy schedule, Mr. j0n decided he couldn't dedicate enough attention to the project with me, so I am now taking full control over it and it's gonna be my baby. It originally was my idea anyhow, so maybe it's for the best.

Anyhooooo, the domain is now transferred fully into my name, and I'm going to outsource the work on elance and/or Guru. I'm gonna put up around 3-5 grand and see if anyone bites to do it for that amount. They may not though.. anyhow, I'll keep you posted. 3. The Forums

The three musketeers (CookingForums.net, MMAForums.net, and MovieForums.org) will soon not be naked anymore. I've hired Mr. Sheldon to skin all 3. I wired him the money a couple days ago (my first wire ever!). There goes another $2500-3000. Poof! See, it goes fast folks, haha.

And in my new 'list' I'm doing a bit of work on the forums. So for those of you who are interested in seeing a forum grow from the beginning up, you may (or may not) want to watch how I go about working on these 3. I don't know any more than anyone else (probably a lot less!), but I bet you at least one will do very well (keep an eye on MMAForums). Oh, and heaven forbid any of you want to post on them, I won't cry.

4. New 'todo' List

I finished my old todo list... here's my new one: Taxes -------------- Get receipt from Sheldon Bo Beldon Bookmark ------------- Create Word file, 2 pages long, on domain stats/price/selling points, etc. Email two companies Domains ------------- Put up domains for sale on 4 sites Movie Vault ------------- Post in 3 forums looking for good PHP Poll Clean main dir Add go back to review link after edit page Change copyright date Poker Forums ------------- Clean images dir Update advertise page Find and fix bottom image thingy problem Write up front-end custom CMS description for Zeeshan (interviews; room for future) Post on vB forum regarding 'Report bad post' bug Sign up as an affiliate on 2 new sites TylerCruz.com -------------- Remove top bar ^^ Add link to RSS Change picture to pointy one MMAForums -------------- Set threaddisplay to 3 months or so Create 20 Threads Write skin description CookingForums -------------- Set threaddisplay to 3 months or so Create 20 Threads Write skin description MovieForums -------------- Set threaddisplay to 3 months or so Create 20 Threads Write skin description BadmintonForums -------------- Set threaddisplay to 3 months or so Create 20 Threads TheTylerProject --------------- Modify 468 banners with new photos Add 120x60 banner Update news Project J --------------- Add to apache, mysql, sendmail, and all that jazz Write description :(

Inspiration

Here's a regular Joe from Sitepoint, just like any of us other entrepreneurs, who even dwarfs Mook-Jon...: Prepare to be inspired: http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2496369&posted=1#post2496369 I suggest you read his blog too at: http://www.here.org.uk/

Holler

Hey, I'm curious who, if any, of you lurkers are. So if you read my blog, please reply here so I know that there are actually people reading it. Otherwise I don't see the point of writing...

XML and Archives Baby!

Oh baby, oh baby... Somebody pointed out to me a little while ago that my archive links weren't working - obviously a result from changing blog URL's to www.tylercruz.com. Anyhow, I finally figured out how to fix this, and so the blog's archive links are working (bottom right) to anyone who may be interested in reading older entries. I've also figure out how to get an XML feed of the site up, and so here is the link: http://www.tylercruz.com/atom.xml And as it is the beginning of a new month, I've updated my daily and monthly earnings on the right side. Here is a rough lowdown on the earnings from the past 6 months:

MoVa:

Private Ads: $2568 FastClick: $732 AdSense: $1,136.57 Affiliates: $150

Total: $4,586

PoFo:

Private Ads: $16000 Affiliates: $1800 Total: $17,800 Grand Total: $22,386

Monthly Average: $3731 Daily Average: $124